which crowns the battery was wrapped around the flag-staff, there not being even air enough to stir it.  It was still so early, that but few persons were abroad; and as we leaned over the bulwarks, and looked now, for the first time for eight long years, upon British ground, many an eye filled, and many a heaving breast told how full of recollections that short moment was, and how different our feelings from the gay buoyancy with which we had sailed from that same harbour for the Peninsula; many of our best and bravest had we left behind us, and more than one native to the land we were approaching had found his last rest in the soil of the stranger.  It was, then, with a mingled sense of pain and pleasure, we gazed upon that peaceful little village, whose white cottages lay dotted along the edge of the harbour.  The moody silence our thoughts had shed over us was soon broken:  the preparations for disembarking had begun, and I recollect well to this hour how, shaking off the load that oppressed my heart, I descended the gangway, humming poor Wolfe’s well-known song—­

               “Why, soldiers, why
                Should we be melancholy, boys?”

And to this elasticity of spirits—­whether the result of my profession, or the gift of God—­as Dogberry has it—­I know not—­I owe the greater portion of the happiness I have enjoyed in a life, whose changes and vicissitudes have equalled most men’s.

Drawn up in a line along the shore, I could scarce refrain from a smile at our appearance.  Four weeks on board a transport will certainly not contribute much to the “personnel” of any unfortunate therein confined; but when, in addition to this, you take into account that we had not received new clothes for three years—­if I except caps for our grenadiers, originally intended for a Scotch regiment, but found to be all too small for the long-headed generation.  Many a patch of brown and grey, variegated the faded scarlet, “of our uniform,” and scarcely a pair of knees in the entire regiment did not confess their obligations to a blanket.  But with all this, we shewed a stout, weather-beaten front, that, disposed as the passer-by might feel to laugh at our expense, very little caution would teach him it was fully as safe to indulge it in his sleeve.

The bells from every steeple and tower rung gaily out a peal of welcome as we marched into “that beautiful city called Cork,” our band playing “Garryowen”—­for we had been originally raised in Ireland, and still among our officers maintained a strong majority from that land of punch, priests, and potatoes—­the tattered flag of the regiment proudly waving over our heads, and not a man amongst us whose warm heart did not bound behind a Waterloo medal.  Well—­well!  I am now—­alas, that I should say it—­somewhat in the “sear and yellow;” and I confess, after the experience of some moments of high, triumphant feeling, that I never before felt within me, the same animating, spirit-filling glow of delight, as rose within my heart that day, as I marched at the head of my company down George’s-street.